Beginning Cryptography - Decrypting XOR Encryption

"Exclusive-OR (XOR) encryption is an encryption method that is hard to
break through with so called “brute force” methods (brute force = using
random encryption keys in the hope you find the correct one.), but the
encryption method is susceptible to pattern recognition. Patterns can be
easily avoided by first compressing the file (compression already makes
it unreadable, it removes patterns for you) before it is encrypted."

"The XOR encryption method doesn’t make use of a public-key, such as
RSA. Instead both the people that encrypt the file as well as the people
that want to decrypt the file need to have the encryption key. The exclusive-OR encryption (as the name already tells you) makes use of the Boolean algebra function XOR."

"The XOR function is a binary operator, which means that it takes two arguments when you use it.
If one of the two arguments is true and the other argument is false, then the XOR function will return true."

In our example XOR Encryption: XOR encryption has been used to encrypt a word made up of seven characters. The
cipher text of the word is as follows:

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